CCJ Innovators profiles carriers and fleets that have found innovative ways to overcome trucking’s challenges. If you know a carrier that has displayed innovation, contact CCJ Chief Editor Jason Cannon at [email protected] or 800-633-5953.
Data is power. In today’s world, we track everything in real-time, from food orders to Uber rides. The importance of real-time updates certainly extends to the freight industry, where tracking pickup data is critical.
In a typical day, a customer may ask several questions to a freight company: Is my pickup on the board today? Is it on a dispatch board? Do you have my pickup request? Are you going to come get my freight?
Freight carrier Estes Express Lines deployed its Pickup Visibility application in 2022 to offer shippers detailed pickup data. The application has an intuitive visual progress bar to display pickup milestones in real-time, including pickup exceptions.
In a 2022 report by DispatchTrack, 90% of customers said they want the ability to track their order. However, one in three consumers weren’t able to track their most recent delivery.
Carrie Johnstone, Estes’ vice president of customer experience and innovation, said the company sought to develop a product that answered three main questions – the questions that customers often asked, Johnstone said, and of which, they had internal data to show.
Johnstone said that the first question that the company sought to answer was, “Is my pickup on the board today?”
The second was, after a customer knows it’s on the board, they ask, “When will my freight be picked up? What’s the plan? When’s the driver going to get there?”
The third question that Estes frequently received was if a third-party or someone who wasn’t on the dock saw that the freight gets picked up, they would be calling the next morning to ask, “Did the shipment get picked up? And if so, what is the tracking number?”
Estes Express Lines
The visual milestone progress bar shows when the pickup was accepted, which means that the dispatcher has received it and the driver’s en route. It also shows an estimated delivery date, as well as an updated delivery date and estimated time of arrival once the shipment is out for delivery. The application, too, displays the driver’s name, which offers helpful information to customers who have often form collaborative relationships with drivers.
Another milestone is when the driver has arrived at the pickup location. The application shows the estimated time of pickup and the number of stops a delivery is away from its destination in real-time, one of the application’s distinct features that notifies customers know how many stops the driver has to make before they arrive at a location.
“That’s really helpful for planning for our customers on their docks,” said Johnstone. As the system continually calculates, the feature can be helpful in cases when the driver has another closer pickup, and the dynamic feature can continually calculate.
“Now sometimes, in LTL, we get pickup requests, and then we get there and the freight’s not ready or there’s no freight to pick up for some reason,” explained Johnstone. “So ‘Driver Departed’ doesn’t necessarily mean that we picked up your freight, but it does mean that we showed up, arrived and departed.”
Once freight has been picked up and loaded into Estes’ system, it offers a fast and easy access to their PRO number. The final milestone is when the pickup’s been completed.
Other features include displaying whether the pickup was a guaranteed pickup, location, and pickup location history, which could be helpful if for some reason the pickup isn’t reconciled or completed.
Estes Express Lines
To develop the application, the Richmond, Virginia-based carrier utilized its back-end system of records and database, incorporating real-time data from drivers’ handheld devices.
Once the data was put together and organized, the team worked on the user interface front-end piece where it mimicked its shipment tracking feature and used real-time information to calculate accurate ETAs. This was essential to distinguish, as Johnstone pointed out that delivery milestones are different than pickup milestones.
Estes also worked with third-party logistics provider Worldwide Express to identify valuable pickup data. “They’re some of the largest callers on the third question of, ‘Did my get picked up and what is the tracking number?’,” said Johnstone. “They were a sounding board on whether features would be helpful to them. They are some of the biggest users of the application, so they get the benefit of it now.”
After about a year of development, it was followed by two months of focused work to launch the product to the market.
Before the app’s launch, Estes Customer Care received approximately 8,000 daily calls and searches about delivery inquiries. Since introducing the Pickup Visibility application, the company has seen 36% phone call/email decrease for tracking pickup cases. “All while our shipment count is up 17% from the same period of time in 2022 to now in 2024,” said Johnstone.
“The questions have shifted,” Johnstone explained. “Instead of saying, ‘Is it on the board today, or what time is it arriving?’ It’s more of, ‘I see it’s on the board today and it’s going to be coming at 3:30. We can’t be on the dock at that time, can we shift that to 2 o’clock?’ So it’s the questions that now come are able to be different.”
Johnstone said that it’s continuing to drive communication in those after-hours and odd situations.
“We’re really working on internal awareness so that all drivers know that the customers are seeing the data. So, it’s really important to order your stops because those ETAs and stops aways are all calculated based on that ordering of stops,” she noted. Dispatchers can also see late pickups and call the customer to sort out potential issues. She added, “So it’s our internal communication that we’re continually working on now to help make the experience better with customers who use the tool.”
Looking ahead, one of the factors that the team is looking into is a lack of call to action when a pickup gets cancelled.
“It doesn’t go into what is the next step the customer should take,” said Johnstone. They’ve received feedback that it would be helpful to know whether the cancelled freight will roll to the next day, or if the customer needs to call if they still need a pickup.
The CCJ Innovators program is brought to you by Bestpass, Chevron Delo, Comdata and Freightliner Trucks.